It's a small world after all...

In this country, we face an acute problem of saturation. Just about anything has intense competition. Scarcity (natural or artificial) is rampant and it is not uncommon to see people fight desperately over stakes that are trivial when compared globally. And hence, about a decade and half ago, when I started my career, I adopted a personal philosophy: expand the pie, don't fight for a share of it . It was evident (to me) that unless we make the available pie bigger, any amount of competitiveness is eventually going to hit a barrier. And being literally resourceless and broke, the only option available to me for helping in expanding the pie, is to take up a career in applied research. Several years down the line, looking back at a very turbulent journey so far, it is time to reflect. Firstly, do I regret anything? Absolutely not! It has been an absolutely invigorating journey and even successful in bits and pieces. Second, do I think that "expand the pie" belief wa...

Suppose we are asked this question: "What is the square root of 5?" How would we go about solving it? We would start by narrowing the scope of our search. Obviously 2-squared is 4 and 3-squared is 9, and so the answer should lie between 2 and 3. In fact, 2.5-squared is 6.25, so the answer should be between 2 and 2.5. Also, 2.2-squared is 4.84 and so the answer should lie between 2.2 and 2.5. This way we "converge" to an answer that is close enough to the required solution. This kind of thinking is characteristically called convergent thinking . In such thinking processes, we are looking for "a" solution. Our process constitutes taking into account several factors, combining them together, eliminating what is not necessary, fine tuning what we already have, until we arrive at the desired solution. Now consider the following kind of problem. Take an object that you can see -- say a pen. Now come up with as many possible uses of the pen as you can th...

Mom: Son, it is 7 'o clock already. Get up! You are getting late for school Son: I don't want to go to school Ma.. The teachers don't like me and all the students laugh at me. Mom: Son.. that is no reason to skip school. You have to go to school -- besides, you are the Principal of the school!! *~*~*~*~*~*~ I know it is an old joke, but why is it funny (even if it is a PJ)? The reason why this story is funny is that, out brain does its thinking typically within the framework of what is called, a mental model . The mental model determines what "ground truths" or unchallenged assumptions, will guide our reasoning process.  The "semantic memory" in our brains is responsible for giving inputs that form these ground truths. The ground truths represent significant concepts relevant to the situation, and relationships among them.  For instance, in the above story, we would have typically assumed that the Son in the story is a student w...